The arrival of rabbits

On Saturday morning, before our second round of coffee, we had rabbits in our rabbitry. The breeder (Brenda) I was in contact with told me she'd be available Saturday morning or else some time late this week to next week. I really wanted to start this project, the sooner the better!

Jake and I opted to take 2 extra bucks for "harvesting" later this winter, in addition to our breeding trio. A breeding trio means 2 does (girls) and 1 buck (boy). This team should provide us with nearly all the meat we and Kai can eat in a year. So we took home 5 rabbits that day. It's been no more challenging than chicken care, and once I get this down the routine will go much smoother. I also plan to switch the rabbits from a pellet diet to a grain/hay diet. A diet change will take months because rabbits have a delicate digestive system and I don't want to upset it by to much change too quickly.

I did hesitate to name them because you don't name your food... however, we will have these guys for 3+ years and I refuse to call them by a number. When it comes time for their death it will be difficult like Quizzie's but no less appreciated. But that's in the future and it can stay there for a while.

Here's the new crew!

Confetti- our baby doe, she won't be ready for breeding until sometime this spring, May probably.

Boy-girl-boy. These three are from the same litter, we are going to keep the girl as part of our breeding trio but her brothers will meet the stew pot in about a month. For now they can be kept in the same cage, because they are too young to mate but boys reach maturity before the girls do so they will have to be moved out soon.

Another shot of Confetti, she is a tri color white-tan-black. She doesn't have many black spots though. She's nice a bit shy but will allow me to pet her. I have to work with her a bit so she's more comfortable being held.

This is Clove, she is Confetti's mom. She wasn't handled much as a young doe so she doesn't like being held. Her nails are stupidly long so I trimmed them today. A few I cut bit too short and they bled, which further reaffirms that I am out to torture her I am sure. See how her but is backed up to the corner of the cage and climbing up it almost? I feel bad for her because she is so scared, but I keep talking calmly to her and petting her so she knows I am not out to harm her.

This is Chestnut, he's a young buck about 6 months old. I think he was a 4H bunny or he was shown a lot because he loves to be petted and he just wants attention. It's rather cute. Ches will come up to the cage door and stand up tall to get noticed. Also he and Kai are best buds, Kai will clean his head and nuzzle him and he just takes it in stride, he'll even give her kisses back. I have a video of them with the cage door shut, but now every time I come in to give food and water he pokes his head out to nuzzle the dog. He is too cute and just look at those ears!

Here's the video of the rabbitry, featuring Kai and Ches.




With any luck I'll breed Clove with Ches this week and we'll have some babies by the end of January! I want to wait until Clove is a bit more settled and not so terrified of me, but that may never happen so all I can shoot for is comfortable.

Holiday Spirit

It's taken me about a week to write this post, simply because I had to come up with the right words.

Last Saturday my door bell rang, a woman about my size with long wavy brown slightly graying hair stood at my doorstep. She had a snowman print gift bag with red tissue coming out the top. I thought, "oh she's got the wrong house.." I learned her name was Susan, and she knew she was a stranger but she just had to thank me. I was puzzled at this point because... thank me? For what? Susan wanted to thank me for the joy the front garden gave her, how happy she was every time she walked by. Our conversation was brief, she said it was all explained in a letter inside her gift bag. I hugged her, wished her Merry Christmas and went inside.

I'll include the letter in it's entirety behind this cut, since it's about a full typed page and I don't want it to take up my whole blog page.

Red Bees and Red Honey

I got sent this article from a friend and thought it was kinda mind boggling. Apparently in Red Hook (Brooklyn) beekeepers are finding RED honey. Like maraschino cherry red! What struck me as funny are the beekeepers, they cannot see why a bee would go and eat such a thing. There is a maraschino cherry factory within range of flight for the bees. Bee's are opportunistic, whatever is easiest and calorie dense they will go to it... red dye and all.

The beekeepers make it sound like, how could they? or don't they know it's junk food?  Of course not! If humans lived "hive-minded" and without grocery store's like bee's do, we wouldn't hesitate at a bright red sugar flowing river of calories, we would dive right in! It sucks though for the honey production because apparently it tastes like cough medicine, syrupy and too sweet.

At the end of the article one of the beekeepers makes mention of the color of the bees returning with this red syrup inside them. "When the sun is a bit down, they glow red in the evenings," he said. "They were slightly fluorescent. And it was beautiful." 


The Mystery of the Red Bees of Red Hook article at The New York Times.

picture is also from the article.

Winter Bee Update

Well so far our girls have held up against the cold. Before winter started we had a good 60,000 strong hive. By the time spring comes we'll be down to around 20,000 (if they make it to spring). A lot of bees die in the winter! Since bee's don't fly when it's below 45-50* outside, all those dead bees pile up inside the hive. Jacob took a coat hanger and bent it into a make shift 'J' shape and used it to pull all the dead bees from the bottom screen of the hive.

This is what he got out.

This is a one gallon Folgers coffee container, now keep in mind this. A pint sized canning jar only 1 inch filled with dead bees is roughly 100 bees. How many do you think is in that red can?

We're guessing somewhere around 10,000. Yikes. Since this is our first year beekeeping, we don't have a reference. Is this normal? No clue, trial by fire.

In other bee news, I made some bee patties today. This is extra food as a "just incase" they don't have enough honey.

For one patty the recipe is:

2 c. Drivert Sugar or Bakers sugar the names are interchangeable (white sugar will do, but drivert is closer to honey chemically... so they say?)
1/2 c. honey (melted so it's runny... it incorporates with the sugar better)
2 T. Mega Bee or other pollen substitute (bee's need protein too... not just sugar)
5-7 drops of peppermint oil (this helps with winter trachea mites)

Jacob put two of these patties on the bees on November 27th. He checked the bees today because the weather is warmer and less likely to shock the hive. They have plenty of patty left and seem to be doing well.

I store the patties in a long container with Drivert sugar inside it. The patties are really sticky so I store them in the sugar. This way sugar will stick to the patty and help dry it out and harden it up so it's easier to handle. When the patties are fresh they are like wet sticky play-dough. After about 1-2 weeks in the sugar they firm up and look like sugar frisbees.

With luck we'll be able to pull them through the winter and expand our hive to two. We also need to find someone willing to let us put a hive on there land. I would love it if we could get someone in town, since bee's do better in city (more variety and all.)

Turkey Day Recipes

I wanted to get some of these documented so next year I didn't loose them to bookmark oblivion. Some of them are family recipes and the measurements are all fudged. I've been working on this post for a few days now, mostly because I'm lazy.... Here we go!

Pumpkin Pie

1.5 c. pumpkin pure`
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. brown sugar
2 Tbl. AP flour
pinch salt
1.5 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cloves
2 eggs
3/4 c. heavy cream
1/4 c. milk

oven: 450* then 350*
Mix Dry's, Mix wets. Add dry's to wet's mix until smooth.  Add mixture to pie crust, bake 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350* bake additional 40-45 minutes until a knife in center comes clean.

Whipped Cream

1 c. heavy cream
3 Tbl. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Beat cream for 30 seconds then add sugar & vanilla. Continue beating until stiff peaks form.


Turkey Brine

2 1/4 c. salt
1 c. sugar
1 Tbl. molasses
8 c. water
5+ garlic cloves, crushed or 3-4 Tbl. garlic granules
3 bay leaves
3 Tbl. poultry seasoning
1 Tbl. peppercorns
2 Tbl. sage
pinch of rosemary leaves
pinch of celery leaves

Bring all ingredients to a boil. Remove from heat, cover and let cool. Place turkey in a large but tight fitting pot, cover with brine. Add water to cover entire turkey. Refrigerate for up to 48 hours before turkey day.

Brine removal tips:

On t-day, remove turkey from brine rinse thoroughly. Dump brine container and fill with cool water. Place the turkey in the cool water for 15 minutes to purge excess salt. Then continue to cook in what ever method. I roasted 325* oven for around 3 hours.

Stuffing or Dressing

2 loaves of bread torn to pieces and dried
2-3 c. celery
2-3 c. onion
1 c. butter
1+ quart of stock (vegetable, turkey etc..)
salt
pepper
poultry seasoning
sage

Mix butter, seasonings, celery and onion. Pour mixture over dried bread crumbs and mix in. Add stock as needed to soften the bread. Cook 320* oven for 2 hours stirring every 30 minutes and adding stock and seasonings as needed).

Thankful day

I have been working on evaluating the miles traveled for this meal and I've decided it's impossible. But I can get it down to the bulk items, some of the spices...yeah I'm not going there. So, here's the run down.

Turkey- Rocky Ridge Ranch- Reardan WA to Spokane WA 23.6 mi Spokane to Cheney 17.7 miles. The birds traveled a total of 41.3 miles

Milk- Spokane Family Farms 34 miles from Cheney WA
Cream- Straus Family Creamery 886 miles from Cheney

Bread (for stuffing) made by me from Montana Milling in Great Falls MT. 375 miles

Cranberries- organic from Northern Cali. Probably similar in miles of Straus Cramery so lets just say 886 miles. I need to find a cranberry bog like Mr. H!

Misc. Incalculable's
pepper
salt
poultry seasoning
butter-costco organic (I did't get a chance with this shoulder, to make my own)

Garden Goods (From our garden)
Squash
Potatoes
Onions
Garlic
Celery
Sage
Thyme

I could have reduced the miles traveled of the cream and the milk by getting it raw from our very local country market. And I probably would have if it weren't for the snow and the shoulder stuff. So next year we'll have about 900 miles less on our total. Wheat for bread I struggle with, no one local grows it organically so I am forced to purchase it regionally. I'd say minus the cranberries and cream we did pretty good. The bulk of the meal was kept under 50 miles! Still, room for improvement but a good job overall.

Hot Chocolate

My "other mother" Mom-J suggested that I write a post on Hot Cocoa Mix's. She wanted to know if I had any recipe's for making my own mix. Their are a wealth of cocoa mix recipes on the internet and it is so easy to make it would probably make a great homemade gift idea. However I find cocoa mix's way to sweet! So I started making them old fashioned style, which takes about 10 times longer than a mix does. But I find that the best homemade things are worth a little time and effort. So here is my hot cocoa recipe and how I make it. As I said I like mine on the more cocoa less sugar side...

Measure your milk (what ever kind you like to use), these mugs are 12 oz. and just about 3/4 full. I leave room for cocoa, spirits, and marshmallows. I use the mugs I intend the finished product to go into, rather than any exact measurement. Heat the milk to around 140* if you don't have a thermometer that's fine, the finger test works good too, should be around the "pretty warm but still touchable stage." Next we add the cocoa powder. For a 12 oz. cup I use 1.5 Tablespoons of cocoa powder per cup. So since I am making two cups I used 3 Tablespoons of cocoa powder. But I add them one at a time, and I use my little sifter to break up any cocoa clumps. It adds an extra dish and an extra step but it's SO worth it. It prevents the cocoa from clumping up in the milk and making a horrid mess!!

I stop and stir in the cocoa after every tablespoon I add the milk, which will also prevent excessive cocoa clumps. Once the milk and cocoa are thoroughly mixed I add the sugar and spirits. In this case I added 1 Tablespoon of sugar and 1.5 teaspoons (ish*) of Kahlua.

Peppermint Schnapps is another fine addition. Or the spirits can be left out entirely, however I would add a teaspoon or so more sugar if you leave it out.

I always add the marshmallows to the bottom of the cup and pour the cocoa over the top. This melts the mallows and adds some additional sweetness to the slightly bitter hot cocoa.

Once the all the ingredients are added I raise the temperature of the milk to around 160*-170* which is the standard "latte" temperature at most coffee shops. This way the hot cocoa isn't at a gulping temp and will last longer and melt the mallows. But if it's for kids the 140* temp is usually pretty good.

Pour hot cocoa into mugs, sprinkle with cinnamon and enjoy.


Hot Cocoa Recipe

2   3/4 full 12 oz. mugs of milk
3 Tbl. Dark Chocolate Powder
1-2 Tbl. Sugar
1.5 tsp. Kahlua or other spirits
handfull of marshmallows per mug

Snow Day

It's been snowing off and on for about 4 days now. Last night was the first time we got really wet snow. Our little electric snow blower has been performing beautifully. A real shoulder saver. I love using things that are body powered but with both Jacob and I having shoulder issues this little snow thrower is a must.

I am working on a blog post about our Thanksgiving and the miles traveled for all the food we consumed. It's kinda fun to see how much of our food was made right here in our county. Not much else is new with me, just healing up and trying to find a comfortable sleeping position. Enjoy the snow if you have any.

Victorian Farm

I saw this posted over at cold antler farm and got hooked. Jacob and I spent all weekend watching all 36 episodes of the show. The show makes me want land to farm so badly! I wanted to post the show here incase anyone is interested and for me to be able to find it in the future.

Victorian Farm Episode 1:

Left Hand learning

I can finally type now, which is better than doing the left handed hunt and peck version of typing. Still...here's what I've learned so far.

Left handed mouse control isn't easy, neither is writing
Keyboard shortcuts aren't so short with only one hand
Elastic waist pants are a must, buttoning pants is.... difficult
Being dressed is humbling
Don't try and remove stitches in a hot room you will faint
Narcotics make me dizzy
Delegating dinner isn't as fun as making it
I am very thankful for freezing meals ahead of time
Surprisingly people in public bump into me A LOT, it's amazing how invisible this sling is
Laundry can be done one armed, but it takes twice as long
Comedy therapy really does work

I am doing really well and now that I am on the flip side I can't wait to recover. I still have about 3 weeks left to be in the sling before I start Physical Therapy. I should be mostly recovered by mid January. Which leaves me time to garden plan and get some seeds started once February rolls around. I left some turnips, carrots, leeks and beets out in the garden. I kept thinking I would have time to harvest them before surgery but it didn't end up that way. Oh well maybe I'll send Jake out there on the next 'nice' day to play in the mud and harvest stuff.

Preserve Toothbrush Subscription

I don't know if I ever mentioned our subscription to Preserve for toothbrushes. This is our 2nd round of toothbrushes and I wanted to just document how the whole thing works.

First we were sent toothbrushes, now 3 months later we are sent this package:

Recyclable paper notice & cardboard shipping container, plus two toothbrushes in return labeled packaging.

Now I place my old toothbrushes back into the same packaging the new toothbrushes came out of. I left the heads poking out just to show you, but before I shipped them back I stuffed the heads in and taped it shut.

Drop it in the mail and voila. Cardboard and paper get recycled, the plastic case for the toothbrushes gets sent back with the old ones = no garbage.  Pretty cool.

Made it

I have to type this one handed since my right arm is still in a sling. But I made it, I am on the flip side now. Hellish nausea and reactions to pain meds aside the surgery went well, I had a labral tear (that didn't show up on the MRI) and a very loose shoulder that has now been tightened back into place. 4 weeks in the sling followed by 8+ weeks of physical therapy which means I should be ready for next garden season right on time!

Happy Healing everyone, I'll post more when I can.

Canning List 2010

With the impending shoulder surgery just 2 days away I figured I should get this last bit of documentation up before I forget in my drug induced stupor to get shit done.  I should go and count how many jars of each item I have for a truly accurate number but lets be honest here.... I'm lazy and just getting the list was a heroic effort for me. I've been really busy lately getting dinners cooked and frozen, and other such food staples ready and in the freezer. Jacob doesn't cook, with him working full time all the domestic tasks are my 'job' and I love it. The kitchen is my domain, saying goodnight to my knives on wednesday morning will be difficult for me. I don't give up control easily, I have issues, I know. But I should be able to dictate dinner from the sidelines even if it drives me crazy.

Here's the 2010 list of dried, canned, frozen glory!

Dried (not including herbs, culinary or otherwise)

Parsnips
Zucchini
Peaches
Cherries
Apples

Canned
I pretty much used Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, however most of the recipe's I tweaked to my own liking. If they aren't from Ball, then I've tried to include the link to other's pages. Here we go.....

Apple Pie Filling
Peach Apple Spice Jelly (left over from pie filling made into jelly)
Peach Apple Pie Filling
Cranberry Sauce
VanillaBean Maple Apple Butter
Apple Sauce
Peaches in light syrup
Cherries in light syrup
Summer Solstice preserves (screwed this one up, should be jelly like instead of jello... even the best canners get distracted.)
Gingered Zucchini preserves
Strawberry Jam
Raspberry Jam
Green Tomato Salsa ( tweaked, since recipe states not to can it)
Roasted Everything Salsa
"medium" Zesty Salsa
Ketchup
Peach BBQ Sauce
Hot, Sweat, Sour Sauce
Pickled Hot peppers
Tomato Sauce (unseasoned)
Tomato Juice
Diced Tomatoes
Green Beans
Carrots
Pickles
Balsamic Onions
Jerked Onions
Roasted Garlic Balsamic Jam = awesome!
Beans: Black, great northern, kidney, pinto, garbonzo ( or equivalent from our garden)
Chicken Stock

Frozen

Huckleberries
Strawberries
Rasberries (not many but next year they should produce wildly!)
pesto
Chickens (purchased from Halperns)
Turkeys (soon to be added from Rocky Ridge Ranch)
Celery
Onions
Bread for stuffing
Tortillas
Loaves of 'Plop' bread or otherwise known as no knead bread
Dinners galore from mac n' cheese to chicken tetrazzini
Scones and quick breads
Granola

Plant Review: Onions/Garlic

Time for another plant review! Onions and garlic this time, it's the stinky plants review...

Here we go! 

Onions

Yellow of Borettana:

A medium sized doughnut shaped onion, mild, but hell when I cut into them. I needed goggles! Many tears were shed over this onion. I left them in the ground too long and the bottom where the roots are will split open and start to kinda rot out. So for next year I will pull them in early-mid July instead of early August. They are not a keeper onion, but will last for some time in the fridge. Mine didn't last that long because they went into the salsa's! I will plant more of these next year.

Yellow Of Parma:

These were my keeper onions, but they didn't do as well as I had hoped. I put the starts in the ground when they were smaller than a pencil and I should have repotted them inside and got them a bit bigger before they went out. Most of mine were the size of my fist, medium to small ish. They have good flavor and seemed to do just fine in my soil. The tops took a while to fall over but when they did I didn't have any rotting issues like I did with the Borettana onion. Sadly I can't seem to find my picture of this onion, but it looked like the average store keeper onion. But it tasted awesome! I don't have many keepers because I used a lot of them in salsa, pasta and bbq sauce, and making onion powder. However I'll plant more of them next year in the hopes that I don't have to buy any from the farmers market. 

Evergreen Hardy: 

Bunching green onion, just standard. I still have a half row that I need to bring inside in the green onion pot. Did you know if you just cut the green part and stick the white part back in the soil (provided you didn't cut off the roots) it will regrow again and again. I have a pot that I keep in the window all year and when I need green onions I just chop them off at the soil line.

Giant Musselburgh and Blue Soliaze Leek:

I honestly can't tell the difference between these two leeks. Apart from one having slightly blue'er foliage they taste identical, or perhaps I am not much of a leek connoisseur. About half of my leek crop is still outside braving the frosts and the cold. They were surprisingly easy to grow, I did start all my onion family from seed. The leeks seemed to do the best even though they spent much of the summer hidden by the tomato jungle.

Garlic

Inchelium Red:

Softneck, keeper. This is the bulk of what I have planted and I love it! Not as easy to peel as store bought garlic. The flavor is a good midline not overpowering or hot. Some of the bulbs grew to near onion size! I have saved some of this seed and replanted it for next year's harvest. 

Georgian Crystal: 

Hardneck, Large cloves only 4 per garlic bulb, mild also good raw. This guy is a dream to peel the cloves practically jump out of the skin. Good soft flavor if you need some garlic in a dish you don't plan to cook. I saved some seed to have more of them, but the bulk of this crop was given away as gifts. 

Asian Tempest:

Hardneck, Purple striped, HOT! I used much of this in salsa and gift giving. It adds great garlic flavor and makes some of the best spicy hummus. I have this growing in the ground now for next year. I really enjoyed this garlic.

Georgian Crystal and Asian Tempest bundles:

Rabbitry Decision

We are going for it.

After long thought about producing our own meat we've decided to start raising rabbits. Being in the city limits us to an animal that makes little to no noise. Since chickens preach to the choir, often at full volume they are not an option. Also we didn't want any one else to take a hand in our own supply of food.

We've purchased 5 cages and Jacob is designing the rabbit hutch in sketch-up. I'll post pictures as this project unfolds.

My mom told me today that my great grandmother couldn't stomach raising rabbits because when the fur came off they resembled cats too much. I disagree, I had to skin a cat for Anatomy at Vet school. ( that was fun.... <--- insert sarcasm )

Plant Review: Tomato

This is going to be a long entry. If you've seen the garden list page ---> you'll know that I grew 7 tomatoes this year. I've gotta get this review written before I forget how I liked each variety. Here we go...

Long Keeper:

Small fist sized tomatoes that are uniformly round, they look like shinny green apples on the plant. They don't ripen well on the plant, they must be pulled inside to slowly ripen. If we had a normal fall we would have just pulled them off the plant. Since we didn't they've been inside about 3 weeks before we were anticipating. Regardless they look great and are just now turning colors. We should have fresh tomatoes through mid November. They ripen to a soft pink color and have good but mild flavor. I'll grow it again but only 1 plant not 5. I still am not sure what to do with them all!

Italian Heirloom:

Gianormous tomatoes! 1+ pounds each! Great slicer and heavy producer. This one was the easiest from seed to start. I had so many starts I put tomatoes in spots I never intended because I didn't have the heart to toss them. The vines grew to 6 feet and were so weighed down Jake and I had to add extra twine supports for them. The fruit was a good juicy slicer, almost bigger than the average hamburger bun, but really I'm not complaining.  I'll grow this one again, but not nearly as many, 2-3 probably. The fruit picture shows it compared to a larger roma tomato.

Martino's Roma:

Wow! This guy didn't vine up like the Italian heirloom, it only got off the ground 3 feet. But those 3 feet packed a punch. The plants were loaded, I'd venture a guess at 30+ pounds per plant. We're going to get a butcher style scale next year to be sure. I digress.... The fruit was hidden under the leaves so it was deceiving. We harvested maybe 10 of these ripe on the plant, everything else has had to ripen slowly inside. The flavor is wonderful with very little juice. I've made TONS of tomato sauce. I will be growing these next year. We put in 5 plants I am thinking a few more wouldn't hurt.

Cherry Roma:

If we would've had height these guys would have kept going. They got to 6 feet easily and likely would have made it to 8+. A typical cherry tomato plant but the fruit had little juice in it. They're excellent sun dried because of all the meat on the inside. Prolific as they were we ended up drowning in them. Exceptional flavor raw that got even more intense when dried. I ate them every time I was outside, harvested daily and couldn't keep up. I had 3 of them in the garden and I'll likely only put in 1 or 2 for next year, I haven't decided yet. Fruit picture shows them green, I didn't have any ripe when I took the pictures of them. Like everything else they came inside green and slowly ripened.

Sheboygan:

A paste tomato but much bigger than the standard roma. The vine was thin with fewer leaves than the other varieties. All the fruit seemed so exposed. I love this tomato. Not as productive as the Martino's but the fruit was on average fist sized. The flavor was awesome and slightly sweet. The fruit ripens to a pink hue. Sometimes the fruit had curled bottoms like chili peppers, which was slightly adorable. I only had 4 of these guys and I will make sure I have that or more next year. The bottom fruit picture shows it's color next to a silvery fir tree tomato. I couldn't get the camera to capture the pinkness of the color. The naked eye is no match for a camera.

Silvery Fir Tree:

Another one that was so easy to grow from seed I had to chuck some out. The foliage is similar to carrots only fatter. This one was the first to flower and produce fruit. A tennis ball sized slicer with good flavor and tons of juice. The plants were so heavy loaded they didn't vine up much, very similar to the Martino's Roma. Silvery Fir only came off the ground about 2 feet and then kinda vined outward on the ground. Each plant had at least 25 pounds of fruit on it when we pulled them inside. I had 5 of them. I will grow this one again for it's early yields, but with the Italian heirloom slicer these became too much.

Green Zebra:

I didn't like this guy too much. It was fine when under ripe but got kinda mushy when ripe. The one plant I had didn't produce much either. It vined up nicely but didn't get to the going until too late. This was a trial plant to see if we liked it before growing it in mass. I'm glad we did because I doubt I will grow it again. I don't have a picture of the plant because I forgot, but I have a picture of a ripe fruit. It's sure pretty with those yellowy stripes.

This year was insane! All of our tomato processing was done after they came inside and ripened a while. I'll remember to give them more room next year and I won't plant leeks right next to each tomato plant. Poor things got lost. As much as I love tomatoes I will be really glad when canning/processing is done.

Lip Balm Update

I had to run some tests on the Lip Balm to make sure they were ready for the pocket (body heat melting). It turns out the cocoa recipe is not. It's too soft and needs more beeswax to firm it up. So today I am going to remove it from the tins and re-melt it, adding 1.5 tsp more beeswax and give this a shot. I am going to update the recipe on the previous blog entry and also here:

Cocoa
4 tsp. olive oil
2 1/2 tsp. beeswax (grated) 
1 tsp. cocoa butter
1/2 vitamin E capsule liquid

Lip Balm

I wanted to try and make my own lip balm from the bees wax we collected. Honestly it doesn't take much beeswax to do this. Only a few teaspoons. I decided to blend my recipes based on a few I've found online and just kinda wing it.

My Recipes:
Plain
3 tsp. Beeswax (grated)
5 tsp. oil (I used olive oil, but any carrier oil would work)
1/2 tsp. honey
1/2 vitamin E capsule liquid

Cocoa
4 tsp. olive oil
2 1/2 tsp. beeswax (grated)
1 tsp. cocoa butter
1/2 vitamin E capsule liquid
















One recipe made 2 burts bees tins. In an effort to recycle I have been saving them. I cleaned and washed each one before refilling it with my own lip balm. Some of the links I used to make them are here:  Lemelange and Yonderwayfarm.

I used a 2 cup pyrex and a stainless steel pot to serve as a double boiler. Then I added all the ingredients, stirred it with a tooth pick until it was totally melted and mixed (which doesn't take long.) I had two tins ready and poured the liquid into them and waited about 30 minutes for it all to harden and set up. Voila, Done!

Why have I been paying 2+ dollars per tin? I made the plain recipe once and the cocoa twice, I now have 6 tins of lip balm awaiting the dry winter air.

It Gets better....

Since today is National Coming Out Day I thought I would give a quick post and a shout out to world. The bullying has got to stop. The suicide's due to the bullying has got to stop! Being a happily married hetero couple, I have no idea what that kind of torment is like. I know first hand the suffering a suicide can inflict on the family left behind. Jacob and family lost his brother John to suicide, not because he was gay but for depression reasons.

I would like to make it known to the world we support you, all of you. I had to post this video of Dan & Terry. Terry is from Spokane WA our neighboring city....  it really makes me sad how he describes it. Plus I just love Dan Savage's point of view.

With love and hope for the future!

The makings of compost

We had our two compost piles in the garden at the back of the yard, right next to the fence. According to composting guidelines a "sunny spot" is best, well right next to our fence is a down right inferno! We couldn't keep  those compost piles wet enough to do anything. Having studied the lay out of our property we decided to move them into "the chicken side yard" which only gets sun for about 4 hours a day. Compost is happening like crazy! I have also started using the leaf mulcher to break down large piles of green stuff.

I took a quick video to show the giant pile of squash vines before they get demolished.


Last year we would have just put all of the garden biomass into the trailer and hauled it down to our yard waste facility (they make compost from it too). But I wanted to utilize at least some of it. The sunflowers I have no hope of mulching since our's is a leaf mulcher you can surmise how powerful it is.  Anything with a really thick stalk or that's gone slightly woody is a no go. But just about everything else I can run through. I have to help it along by cutting stuff as I go into small pieces, and stopping to unclog but for the most part it's great.

Here's the giant pile of squash after the mulching. It was really heavy and took two people to move (thanks for the assist mom.)

In a happy bonus we now have red wiggler worms in our compost pile which won't last long as it heats up. But they sure help the breakdown process. Our compost piles went directly over the chicken guts that we had placed some red wigglers in, they found their way up to the banquet of new veggie parts and food scraps.

Chicken Experiment

Since we started eating meat again we've been extremely picky about where it comes from, who's raising it, and how. I touched more on our thoughts in the post On Meat Eating so I won't go into them here. Regardless we found a couple raising chickens that fit our criteria, for chicken the criteria is:
1. Local
2. Organic or better
3. Harvested Humanely
4. Not Cornish Cross

I will hand it to the Cornish Cross chicken and it's genetic engineers, they know how to make a bird PACK on the meat. These are the birds they show in the movie Food Inc. Birds that have so many health issues they are impossible to list, and for the most part if you eat chicken in the USA this is the bird you eat. It's the most cost effective, the 'CC' chicken can be harvested at 2 months of age, it takes normal chickens 4 months to come close to the same weight. But you also ingest all that animals health issues, um no thank you. So I decided to run an experiment. I purchased a chicken from Rocky Ridge Ranch that fit all the criteria accept that last one. Then Jake and I picked up our chickens from the Halpern's a local couple raising Delaware or RedStar's for meat. The difference's were obvious even before cooking.

The chicken on the left is a "real" chicken, what chickens are supposed to look like. Long legs that can support the body weight, proportional leg and breast meat. The chicken on the right is the Cornish Cross, short fat legs that can't walk far or at all, and giant breast meat. I affectionately refer to the CC chicken as the freak show chicken. We wanted to see if we could taste the difference in the meat. Being solid vegetarians for 3+ years and only eating "real" chicken not freak show chicken when ever we did eat meat. We wanted to know, can we taste a difference between them? So I decided to slow cook each one.

With a resounding YES we can taste the difference! The CC fell apart, that was sure nice but I am wondering if it's because through tampering with it's genetics it's joints and ligaments were weakened. Or is it just because this bird didn't walk much in it's life. In any case the meat has NO flavor of it's own, and if it weren't cooked in anything would be really yucky. But what was truly bad about this bird was the texture of the meat. Mushy, soft, and lacking any firmness at all. The 'real' chicken had a much richer taste like mushrooms. That might not make sense but, that's the closest taste I could come up with. I wonder if that's what people mean by "gamey" when referring to meat. Maybe we are all so used to the mush flavor of CC meat that if it's not breast meat it's gamey? I don't know. The real chicken didn't fall apart however, but retained much of it's consistency and was lovely to cut into. It didn't produce as much meat as the CC did, but I knew it wouldn't. Nothing can compare with mutant tampering.

It was a good experiment to run, eye opening for sure. For a much more through Cornish Cross vs. Heritage chicken experiment see Antiquity Oaks Chicken for dinner?: part one, part two, part three.

Pepper flakes

Cayenne Pepper flakes from both green and red cayenne's dried then ran through the food processor to make flakes and seeds. I think this will last us for 2 years unless we gift some of it away....

Leeks

I harvested some leeks this morning. About half of the crop is going to stay in the ground and I'll attempt to overwinter them. I am new at crop rotation so I kinda screwed it up and had leeks planted where I'll need to get garlic in the ground. Oh well, so I pulled some the leeks and plan to slice and freeze them for quick access for soups. Mmmm.... potato leek soup.

They didn't get very big because I had inter planted them with the tomatoes... as in buried within the tomato jungle/wilderness. Poor things did admirably considering sunshine must have been absent for most of their life.

Thank you GoDaddy!!!!

I just had the greatest customer service experience with GoDaddy.com. Jen and I originally used Blogger for our blog. After a while of using Blogger, we switched to WordPress because we liked the look of it and we could get our own domain name through them. Well, after setting up and using WordPress for awhile, we were extremely disappointed with them. Their customer service seemed very elitist and rude. It's definitely not a place for inexperienced bloggers.

So we finally decided to go back to Blogger. The downside was that people could not type in oxrayfarm.com in the address bar and get to our site. You were forced to put the www. beforehand or else it wouldn't work.

It's been almost a year now and our domain name is expiring through WordPress. We decided to go with GoDaddy.com. I went to their site and easily found out that I could have the domain transferred to GoDaddy without having to let it expire. So I went through GoDaddy's very nice directions on how to have the domain transferred. Everything went as it showed and in just 15-20 minutes, we had the domain transferred to GoDaddy. It was relatively easy and it cost $8 for the first year. So we were pretty happy with that. We did that on Sunday evening.

So today (Tuesday), I get a phone call from GoDaddy. At first, I'm thinking "oh crap" what's wrong. I get on the phone and it's Matt from GoDaddy. He's incredibly pleasant sounding and says that he's calling to welcome me, thank me for choosing GoDaddy, and ask a few questions. He's wondering why we're transferring to GoDaddy. I explain to him how we weren't happy with WordPress and from what we could tell, GoDaddy would be better. He then tells me how I'm the first person he's ever seen have a transfer go through in less than three days! During the call, he also told me how he's in Phoenix, AZ,  it's pouring buckets of rain for the third time today, and lightning struck a tree in their parking lot. He was very pleasant for such a crazy day. Then he followed up with asking me if I had any questions or anything he could help me with. I told him about still having to add the www. in front of our domain name even after the transfer. He said no problem, took 20 seconds to make a change, and fixed it for me.

I thanked him for his help and the call was over. I hung up the phone, turned to Jen, and said, "That was just one of the best customer service experiences I've ever had in my life!"

So I'm thanking GoDaddy again for such a great experience!!!!

Plant review: Peppers

Fish Pepper:

A beautiful little pepper plant with it's variegated foliage and oddly colored/striped peppers. This guy was slow to start producing, honestly we didn't think it would even do anything. It's heat is a #3 according to the Seed Savers Exchange heat index. I found that to be true, although I don't eat straight hot peppers so I really wouldn't know. Average pepper size was around 2 inches, tiny but with a kick. I'll grow this again next year only probably not as many plants.

Sweet Chocolate:

Only a small handful of these got to the chocolate color before we had to pick them due to cold. The ones that did make it to the chocolate stage were beautiful, a shinny brown outside and brick red inside. Not as sweet as the name implies, they had a bit more heat for a sweet pepper given it's heat number is #0. Not anything unbearable but warmer than your traditional 'green pepper'. This little plant was pretty prolific, which was surprising. I only put 3 out this year, next year I will grow more.

Joe's Long Cayenne:

Prolific, loaded, weighed down. I put in 5 of these thinking that should be enough for all the salsa I want to can. YIKES I am over run with these. We had the same problem with the cayenne as the chocolate, due to cold not many of them are red like the name cayenne implies. Our harvest was mostly green but some we managed to pamper to red. Much of these we will dry and have green cayenne powder. I intend to grow these again but not as many since they did so well. Heat #3.


Quadrato Asti Giallos: (Green Bell Pepper)

I didn't think these would attain much size but was surprised. They didn't get to the grocery store giant size, but held there own for stuffed green peppers. A really good sweet taste it's heat number is #0. The plants only had 7 or less peppers on them. I had a hard time germinating these, so I'll make sure to double the amount I try. I was only able to put 3 plants out in the garden and I'd like at least 6 or more for next year.


Wenks Yellow Hots:

Another prolific hot pepper a #3. These guys were tall, leggy plants and loaded with little yellow hot peppers. They get a lovely fire orange the longer they are on the plant. I had the easiest time growing this variety. It was the first to put out "fruit" and produced for the longest time. I will grow this again but not as many since I had two other varieties of heat for salsa's.

Next year I would like to grow an Anaheim pepper for a larger roasted pepper. I ended up purchasing some of these from the farmers market to roast and freeze. I roasted much of the Wenks harvest they will make a great spicy addition to pizzas and hummus. Knowing how poorly the germination rate was, I will  make sure to start more of the varieties I really like or felt I needed more of. I was pretty happy with our pepper choices for this year and how well they performed in this strange growing year.

first knitting project

In my not so spare time, my neighbor Kara has been giving me the basic's about knitting. I caught on quickly this time because I've already had another basic knitting lesson from my other friend Gayl. I 'got' it when Kara taught me. I practiced and practiced with a small ball of yarn and eventually moved on to this:

It's my first ever knitted dish cloth. Wonky and not quite square, but still I did it!

SlowFoodUSA egg campaign

Thank you SlowFood this is awesome! I urge everyone I know to please sign the petition for our food safety. Keeping my own backyard flock has made me more sympathetic towards the treatment of our animals and the entire food industry.

Thank's to Halpern Homestead for allowing us to support up and coming farmers and for our winter meat supply! It's video's like this that make me appreciate people who are on the leading edge of this food revolution.

Interior decorating?